Billy strained to catch the glimpse of the monster that overshadowed the unsuspecting Russian.
“Zombi-eeeeeeeeeeeeee…”
Billy's vision could not be trusted in that moment, but he did make out Broom turning to look behind him and Billy could see the hands of the monster take hold of Broom and toss him like a child's doll and send the Russian flying to slam into the black stone dome he loved so much.
Then the Time Zombie let out a scream that matched the anguish in Billy's soul and the monster and his stench vanished from the island as if neither had ever been there.
When Broom opened his eyes the Time Zombie was no more, but Billy Purgatory was and the Russian had no time to react as with both hands Billy Purgatory swung the climbing hammer right into the side of Broom's head. Billy swung so hard that he lost his grip on the hammer and it went flying from his grip and sailing out towards the sea.
Billy watched it sail and thought about how Pop liked baseball so much.
“I'm going to have to disagree with your ideas about my mother.”
Broom was on all fours and shook his big head. Blood dripped from the Russian's eye socket and stained the white sand below him. The big Russian was strong as a bear and seemed fascinated that he was bleeding.
“It saved you?”
Billy knew that Broom spoke of the Time Zombie and was as shocked as he was that the monster had seemingly appeared just to keep Broom from ending Billy's life.
Billy had no answer other than the kick his boot gave to the bleeding side of Broom's head. The impact was severe, and the Russian gave a grunt and then sprang, catching Billy off balance, and the two men crashed back onto the ground and locked their hands around one another's throats.
Broom was stronger than Billy, but Broom was also bleeding out of his eye and left ear, not that Billy was in much better health. Billy turned out to be a much dirtier fighter than Broom, and the first knee he sent to the Russian's crotch seemed to work so well that Billy gave him another. The Russian's elbow jabbed into Billy's throat, and they rolled once more and this time Billy ended up on top as they crashed into the dining chairs of Broom's camp.
“You know more than you're telling me, Broom.” Billy sent both his fists down and impacted hard at both the Russian's temples. Broom let out another grunt as his ears rang, but Billy's raised voice was much louder than the stinging noise in the Russian's ears.
“There's a reason my mother cut my face. Tell me why.”
Broom kicked Billy into the air and sent him crashing into the dining table. Billy went tumbling over the side with the contents of his pack spilling out all around him.
Both men pulled themselves up and gasped for breath, staring into one another's eyes on either side of the collapsed table and chairs. Billy, out of instinct, had grabbed his skateboard and reared back with it only to come face-to-face with the laughter that spilled now from the deep pit of Broom's belly.
Broom raised the Captain's pistol and aimed it between Billy's eyes.
Billy stood glaring at Broom as the Russian began to speak. “Here are your answers, Billy Purgatory. Even I and my kin are insignificant, and we are Gods. We began as all good Gods do, through science. Moon's savagery is what makes her beautiful, and her ways became our ways. We became caught up in all of these magnificent tortures.”
Broom took a step closer to Billy, who did little more than breathe hard and bleed as the Russian spoke.
“Your issue, Master Purgatory, and the issue of those like you, is that you see yourself as being not a part of the grandiose madness that has been unleashed. You feel that perhaps you can do something that would further separate you from it all, and from me. You feel as though there is an action that you can imagine which has not already been foreseen by things like me. All because you are random, and wild and new. None of that measures when placed against the expanse of time.”
“Random has always been on my side.” Billy spit blood to the ground. “Random is on my side even with a gun to my head.”
“I can see why the monster watches over you like an angel, pulling me off you before my hammer crushed your skull. You are no better than a monster, your Time Zombie. That creature has always been known to us with contempt, contempt wrapped in pity and set afire by God's matchstick.”
“You never saw him coming, Broom. Just like you never saw me coming.” Billy studied the Russian, strained to follow what his movement would be when he was done hearing himself throw out big talk.
“All of us will always exist somewhere; all of us will be remembered fondly by someone. Even, and sometimes especially, the most vile among us. I do not expect you to understand your place in the universe. Even the stars wish a wider and more majestic stage a'spiraling down the cosmic well.”
Billy could see Broom's finger begin to squeeze the trigger as he finished his speech. “What a pathetic sight you are to me, a boy-man holding a child's toy. You should be cowering before me, but you're too proud and stupid to do so. I and mine are the new gods, Billy Purgatory. You can't win a fight against an angry god with a pistol full of thunderbolts.”
It's said that Billy Purgatory was faster on that day than he had ever been before. He made no grandiose motions, though. He simply raised his arms two inches higher than they had been one-thousandth of a second previous. That's all it took to save his life and disrupt the wrath of the new gods.
Billy felt the impact of the .45 slug against the wood of his skateboard and was pushed several steps backward in the process. Billy studied the wood before his eyes, and could not find the hole where the slug surely entered and exited. It was unfathomable to Billy that a skateboard could deflect a bullet; that is, until it did.
Slowly, he lowered the board and saw that the look on Broom's face was one that said that he found what had just occurred to be equally unfathomable. Then Billy lowered the board to his chest and found that not only had the bullet ricocheted off the board but through magic, or the science these new gods seemed to love so, had found its way back to Broom. Billy stared at the blood that poured from the new hole that had been torn into Broom's throat.
The pistol dropped from Broom's hand, and then the Russian went to his knees. His eyes pleaded, and as a river of blood left the wound in his neck, Broom used the last store of energy he had within him to push the word from his broken voicebox and raise his left hand into the air and point at Billy Purgatory's old skateboard.
“Where..?” Broom asked this of Billy in little more than a rasp.
Billy looked again at the board and knew that he, especially, didn't have the answers to any of the questions Broom had asked of him that day. Then Billy thought about all the evil things Broom had said, and Billy thought about the black rock at his back that this dying man before him loved so. Billy considered that Broom might be the only man in all the world who knew how to manipulate the stone, and the horrible things these manipulations could do, and perhaps had already done.
“Did you foresee any of this?” Billy asked as he raised the board again into the air above his own right shoulder. “Did you foresee that divine hole in your throat?”
Billy swung his board as hard as he ever had then towards the broken head of the self-proclaimed god who was on his knees before him. “You didn't predict me coming here. Your big rock is nothing but a big rock now.”
Billy told himself that he had to be sure that this man-god named Broom was finished for good – that he had no choice but to do what he had to do. “My name is Billy Purgatory, and I don't believe in the future.”
Chapter 33
Vikings & Tigers
The village on the Tiger Peninsula was used to storms, especially during the season of the thief moon. The rain hadn't even begun yet, but the burnt oil color had spread itself thick in the fat clouds above.
The wind was angry: it would not hold tight the cold sting of the storm bosom much longer. The air was hungry for it and the beach of crashing wave rock below had nowhere to hide. There would hav
e to be a drenching that night - a cleansing.
Even the village gods turned their eyes from it, praying to themselves that they might have someone left to sacrifice to them when this final act of storm brought curtain and house lights.
There would be much praying that there would be any beach left at all.
Creatures of the sea were in deep water, and the line of fishing junks rose and fell to the pull of the moon and the banshee wind.
The last fisherman cursed it all. He remembered what Grand-father had told him about a drowning in octopus ink. How the boats had found their way atop the longhouse when the light of the sun-head came back from darkness.
“Your grandmother woke screaming, covered in starfish. The old woman never smiled again.”
The rope fought the last fisherman. He clutched the pier pole and pulled against nature and struggled to get one last loop out of the line. That boat was fifty years old, almost twice his age.
This would be over and the fish would return, but all the bounty they would bring would be mocking laughter at a fisherman with no boat.
The other men had been holed up in the village for hours. The last fisherman had run from his wife and children down to the docks. His brother's boy had a dream.
Crows pecking at the ropes.
There wasn't a laboring crow anywhere to be seen, but the last fisherman was already out and he would tie that last knot.
He would not be bested by a crow.
As he struggled, the last fisherman could just make out the ship that ran the storm and broke the mist coming towards him and his besieged dock.
The world was far too thick to see where it had come from, but the last fisherman ventured the guess that it had somehow sailed around the tortoise rocks.
He had never seen a boat quite like it, except in a movie he'd snuck into in Shanghai.
It was a boat built by North Men. Their gods were savage.
They had gods who brought storms like this one. Pounding their war hammers at the stars and grinning as they shattered.
The last fisherman couldn't look away.
The vessel had a single black sail, had it not been for the fluttering of that sail in the wind the ship would have been near invisible against the horizon.
The omen weaved into the canvas was unfamiliar, but one doesn't always have to know that an image is evil. Sometimes staring into it is reassurance enough.
An eye plucked from a skull that was ringed in four star point flames. A green tentacle curled down the eye like it was the dead nerve cluster that had sent signals to a monster's brain.
The last fisherman didn't bother to pray.
One man stood the deck of the phantom ship and rode out of the storm. He had a thick rope coiled around each arm, one pulled the rudder, the other adjusted sail to wind. It was much more like the man rode the storm in on his own and the ship was merely following him.
The fisherman fell down to the plank bamboo dock when the Viking ship slammed into it. The man on the deck didn't move from the impact. He was strong and could not be swayed by any of it.
He was tall, but was like no plunder sailor the fisherman was used to. He was a white man, pale, yet his features did nothing to cry northerner. His hair was jet black and held no shape beyond an untamed reed forest that traveled where it was pushed.
Goggles covered his eyes, the lenses green glass. A scar made a half-X across his face as if to say his life had been a long struggle that had no intention of giving up.
He wore the vest and gloves of a soldier. The ripped pants were colored to camouflage a man in a desert and were useless to hide him here. He wore a soldier's pack with a plank of wood strapped to it and had lost a sword somewhere along the way, the empty scabbard pointing up and giving the finger to the gods.
The new man's arms were tattooed with skulls and razor wire totems. His boots hit the deck of the dock as the last fishermen pulled himself away.
The man wrapped the line from his vessel around the dock spike.
The fisherman ran and didn't know why. Was this thing on the dock the demon of the storm? Hadn't that wooden box strapped to the deck of his ship been a casket?
The last fishermen caught site of the woman in the cloak when the lightning finally began. She was walking towards where he had run from, stepping out of the jungle as if it had spawned her.
That night, the last fisherman nightmared on crows and starfish, and he would never be right again.
II
Billy Purgatory used the lantern to light a cigar. He rarely smoked, but it was cold on Tiger dock and he had fought hard to gain the fine tobacco that he was about to enjoy.
He had near lost his life for it, and what little else he had gained, was all packed onto a stolen relic of a ship.
The thought of Asian Vikings made him smile.
The lantern was one of those old-timer jobs you'd find hanging off the back of a train caboose. It didn't go with the motif, but nothing he was connected to then made any sense. Lighting the lantern had proved a lot easier than striking up the cigar.
He figured he had ten minutes to take a few puffs before he was soaking. That time was a complete luxury he shouldn't have wasted on trying to smoke.
He had at least three klick's worth of humping ahead of him. The snakes would be heavy and who knows what else. He'd hit so many backwaters lately, it was hard to keep straight which poison-laden inhabitants were where.
It didn't set his mind to ease that this place had Tiger in the name. Maybe it was shaped like a tiger's hind end and not actually filled with them. Billy Purgatory was in no mood to fight a tiger. He didn't have a chair or a whip.
He looked back onto the deck of the ship. The box had made it and was still ratchet-strapped down hard. The neon blue bindings looked completely wrong criss-crossing the deck.
Billy wasn't sure why he hadn't just left him to rot on the island. Why he'd gone through the trouble to nail what was left of him in that box?
But there he was.
Maybe Billy needed the company.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the outline of a woman; the flame of the lantern had burned spots into his eyes. Her voice carried well against the encroaching storm-clatter. She might as well have been whispering into his ear, yet she was ten feet out. Nine when she took a quick step.
“Hello, Billy Purgatory.”
For a split second, he was able to fool himself. Pretend it was his mother. He almost said the word, “Mom?”
Naive mutterings were lost on that dock that night though. He could wish all he wanted, but it was never coming to pass. Not here. He tossed another coin into the mental wishing well, suddenly hoping the woman shape across from him would reveal itself a tiger.
Tigers would have been much easier to deal with.
“Hello, Anastasia.”
The first part of the little surprise party ended and instead of lights flipping on and cheap party balloons tied to the furniture, he watched her simply pull back the hood of her cloak.
Her long black hair was tied atop her head. A set of bloody chopsticks held it in place. Her eyes were silver-green, the retreating moon was unnecessary to make them shine.
She gave Billy the respect of not hiding her fangs.
“So, how did you know?” he asked this out of sincere curiosity. He'd always known she'd been tracking him, but he also knew he'd shaken her off his trail three years ago.
“This was the only place left.”
“If that's true, it's really sad, Anastasia.”
“I'm on a mission.” She smiled. “You know about those don't you, Billy?”
He bit down hard on the cigar, giving up trying to light the damn thing. She was suddenly two steps closer to him, and he hadn't even noticed her move.
“Your people are dead, Anastasia. I never completely believed that to be true. I've been all over though and I've discovered lots of things that try to keep themselves secret. I never ran across another vampire though.”
“You don't though. I'm completely unconcerned. You set fire to the hive you called a family when we were teenagers. Nobody with fangs has given you an order in a very long time.” Billy turned away from her, something he wouldn't normally chance, but he knew she would be curious and wouldn't move in for an attack of any sort while he was grandstanding.
He knew his grandstanding kind of turned her on.
Billy would give her a show. If she wouldn't go away and leave him be, she'd get what she paid for.
He held the lantern aloft and toward the deck of his Loki boat.
“I've seen what they're doing.”
Anastasia stared into him, wondering. “What who's doing?”
“Them.” Billy grinned when he said it. “Now I know who sends you on your missions.”
“So what?” She actually shrugged like it didn't matter. “Maybe you do. How much would any of it matter?”
“What do they want with me, Anastasia?”
He could hear her sniff at the wind off the ocean. He knew she could smell him. “Is that..?”
“Yes, Anastasia, it's a coffin.” He was smiling bigger then. “You like that smell?”
“Vampires hate the smell of death.” She wasn't lying any longer; she was completely revolted by it.
“Smells like defeat, huh?” Billy twisted up the wick of the lantern. Felt the heat burn hot inside the cast iron and glass.
Anastasia tried to remain flippant. “Only humans die.”
“No, Anastasia,” Billy began, “that is not true. To hear the dead guy on the deck there tell it he was far more than human. He had a most high opinion of himself.”
“Who's in the box, Billy?”
“He'd have killed you just for making the mental leap that he was a man at all.”
She took another step towards him. “Tell me.”
Billy Purgatory wasn't entirely proud of how good he felt then. Of just how much her waking fear was stroking his ego.
Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird Page 29